vignette ~ The Runner

It was dark and she was tired, hungry, and sick of running. Not bothering to turn on a light, she slipped through the third floor hotel room door and went straight into the bathroom, stripping off clothes as she went, setting her gun and knife on the counter, and stepping into the water, sighing heavily in the dark.

This was getting so old, this running. I just need some time, a moment to regroup, a chance to adjust to this danger. Why all this happening when I don’t know enough to hurt anybody is beyond me, just beyond me.

The water soothed over her head, her face, her body as she tried to let relaxing thoughts ramble through her mind ... swinging in her yard when she was six, fishing with her dad, learning to bring down a deer with a bow and arrow and the proper way to dress it, her parents’ deaths, the day she joined the Corps, stumbling upon the evil in the Corps. She preferred the sweet memories of her youth, but couldn’t shut off the desperate ones of the last four months.

She had never been satisfied with the explanation of her parents’ accident. Although she’d only been eighteen, she’d known something wasn’t right with the ‘official’ findings. Her dad had been working on classified stuff, as always, but she had a feeling his latest discovery had brought about their deaths.

Could she have realized what his discovery would lead to? Her dad had long since forgotten that defining moment in her life when she was four: her mother wanted the three of them to go to the beach for the day, but her father said he had to finish a report for the Colonel and he couldn’t go. Kellie had innocently said, “No Dada, you want to work on the star field equations since you are so close.” Her father had blustered a moment trying to deny it, then had stared at her and demanded to know why she had said such a thing. Her mother was startled at first, but had hurriedly stepped in and distracted her father, explaining away her daughter’s comment with some inanities until her mother could walk out the door with her, leaving her dad to his work.

She and her mother hadn’t gone to the beach, but had gone on a long drive instead. Stopping in a little-used and mostly-forgotten country park, they sat for awhile under the tall, stately trees and watched ducks and geese in and around the adjacent pond. “Kellie,” her mother had finally said, “you must never let anyone know that you can hear their thoughts.” She had looked at me while she was talking and I knew somehow that what she was saying was important. And she continued on. “My mother could hear people’s thought but it was only as she lie dying in the hospital that she told me all about it. I never had the ‘gift’ as she called it, but she said that my children might and that it needed to be kept secret and guarded well.”

“Kellie, you have a gift which you must never tell anyone about. You must never let anyone know you can hear their thoughts, and you must try very hard to keep on doing what you are doing as if you didn’t hear them. Do you understand?” Although I was only four, somehow the things she said fit into a pattern in my head that felt right, and I knew I would watch my actions. The ‘gift’ was in place, it was aware, and it would help me guard against discovery.

No one knew Kellie had any knowledge of her father’s work and since none of it made any sense to her anyhow, she simply filed it all away in a dark place in her brain. After her parents’ deaths, her sorrow made her frenetic and she finished her Upper Schooling in three years instead of four -- the accomplishment ultimately giving her a head start when she applied to the Corps.

After graduation from school, she waited to hear about her Corps application and spent the next eight months at piddley jobs, not wanting to commit herself to a regular job in case she was accepted and told to report immediately.

She had worked the mid-shift for five weeks for a livestock prep company, gutting them, cutting them up, sorting through the left-over parts for various disposals. After that it was four weeks at McKeel-Corkin tracing electrical errors in rejects. Then it was a few weeks at The Wilderness, guiding adventurers on their ‘Survive It Yourself’ tours. A few weeks at Motley Mandy’s Hole In The Wall cooking for customers at the biggest little pub on the wharf. A few weeks driving trucks for Loggers Inc, a few more hawking t-shirts at Barnum’s, and the rest of the time spent doing a lot of gardening.

Her horticulture job at the Four Seasons Arboretum was probably the most satisfying short-time job. And since she knew nothing about gardening, she had to really focus and learn as much as she could as quickly as she could to do the job right. Poisonous plants, edible plants, trainable plants -- she soaked it all up, managing to learn far more than the average temporary, and when she left the job she knew her skills had been nicely rounded out.

Memories, memories. She cleared her mind, soaped up, rinsed, got out, and dried off. Putting on her sleep-set, a cute blue top and matching shorts which were the same color as her eyes, she ran a comb through her short auburn hair, gathered up her gun and knife, stepped around the corner into the sleeping area, and froze.

Something was wrong .... the air displacement, an additional shadow, a new sound -- something was different than it was when she left to eat an hour and forty-five minutes ago. Quickly she scanned the shadows, reluctant to turn on a light in case light was a trigger. Then .... she felt it -- a trag! Dammit! A motion sensor!

Quickly she grabbed her pack, threw open the window and flung herself outward, grabbing the auspiciously-placed downspout on the opposite building and sliding to the pavement. She hit the alley running, wincing as her bare feet ran across a number of unknowns -- slimy, sharp, rough, totally disgusting things she didn’t want to stop and check out, even if she’d had time. There was no question she had to hurry -- she had less than 90 seconds to get at least five miles away. How much time had elapsed since she had triggered the trag simply by her presence? How much time did I waste just looking for the damned thing?

Sprinting out of the alley she grabbed onto the back ladder of a passing night truck, rode eight blocks, then dropped off to race down a subway entrance. Jumping the stile, she barely made the last car as the doors closed and the train smoothly took off.

Distance! Dammit, I need distance!

The train picked up speed and she sprinted through the nearly-empty cars, finally reaching the cab. No engineer to worry about -- this one’s automatic. She shot off the latch-lock mechanism, stepped inside, and quickly accessed the computer controls. Speed, speed, speed, speed! She finally found the right control, entered a number and the train shot forward.

Exactly eleven seconds later there was a deafening roar and a blast of light and force which threw her to the floor. Her head banged against the cabinet hard enough for her to see stars, and when her vision cleared she sat up, still a little stunned as she gaped at the destruction behind her. Well, gaped at it for only a moment, as it turned out. Since the cab was still connected to power, she was still barreling down the straight-aways and around corners. She and the cab. Everything else was gone. Everything within five miles of that hotel room had been destroyed -- animate, inanimate, everything had been reduced to ashes and cinders.

Amazement at her fortunate escape was very quickly overshadowed by new realization of her dilemma. Oh god, oh god, oh god, I am in so much trouble. So sooooo much trouble. So much biiiiig, big, big, big trouble.